Going Home
by GotchaYouLilDirtbag
Summary: Post-Schawarma ONE-SHOT the group heads home in one of Stark's Limousines. Its not a smooth ride. This story has been in my mind for a bit. Hope you like it. Rating changed (thanks for suggestion!) - there are only a few swear words in it.


The inside of the Stark armoured ' limousine' smelled of battle. It was clinging to them all, hanging in the closed air, cloying and fetid. A spice of sweat, blood, burnt flesh, burning plastic and metal, and the scorched-ash stink of discharged weapons both human and alien. But no one commented on it. No one spoke at all. They all just sat slumped in the exhausted post combat stupor that followed every battle. Staring at nothing. Thinking about nothing. Feeling very little of anything.

All that would come later.

She knew.

Her own dead eyed gaze was locked into the city as it passed by her window. It looked nothing like the New York she knew. Not anymore. The entire scene was smudged in a natural evening shadow, unlit by the usual night lighting, but it was not dark enough yet to hide what the daylight hours had delivered. As far as she could see it was rubble: scorched and broken, sharp-edged wreckage of blasted concrete and iron, mangled and ruined cars and buses, and the innards of disembowelled buildings. Some of it was still burning and throwing up unsettling random flickers of light and dark. And here and there, the soft silhouettes of bodies, half obscured, pressed to the ground or debris where they had fallen. This place had yet to be touched by the brightly lit emergency service vehicles she could see roaming more distant streets, and so here the shadowy dead were everywhere still.

So many dead.

So many people she knew all gone in less than a week. Good people. Her thoughts turned to Phil Coulson, but just as abruptly shied away again, and she cast her gaze down to the right to rest upon the man slumped bonelessly against her side, his head a dead weight on her shoulder. She wasn't sure Clint yet knew about Coulson's death. They hadn't been present for Director Fury's debrief and there had been scant time to dwell on anything other than Loki and his hoardes since then. And it hadn't seemed the best idea to put words to it over Shawarma. Steve had told her, in a snatched moment in the quinjet heading for New York and she had immediately, without thinking, ordered him not to pass that information on to her partner. Not yet. The sort of devastation that was the death of a man so dear to both her and her partner was for another place, another time - somewhere away from the battleground. She returned to staring out of the window and forced her thoughts back to the view outside.

She blinked.

Movement.

There was movement outside the car. A flash of life in the corner of her eye. She jerked her head to the left, searching. Her hand landed on the butt of her handgun, fingers curling around the cold metal grip. She stared out into the night, looking for the threat. Movement. Again. About 20 feet out from the car... Fire. It was just a fire. A small one still burning in the bowl of an urban automobile sized blast crater and throwing up shadows against ripped and sinewed earth and asphalt. Just fire and shadows. And already receding behind the car. Damn. She blew out a controlled breath through pursed lips.

"What is it?" Clint's voice was a rough murmur beside her. The archer had roused from his sprawl and was trying to see out of the window, his keen eyes searching the dark. The others in the car were still sleeping, lost in their own fugue or turned from them, and had not been alerted by his questions. They were good at keeping themselves under the radar, she and her partner.

"Nothing." She replied in the same bare whisper. "It's nothing."

"OK." He breathed. And she felt more than saw him move, painfully, back against the seat, canting slightly against her to keep his damaged knee straight and resting on the seat between Thor and Steve who were sitting across from them. On that sort of angle, and with how exhausted he was, within moments his head slipped back against her shoulder. Sweat-spiked black hair poked and tickled her cheek. She raised her hand and absently palmed his beard and dirt bristled cheek for a fleeting moment, feeling the familiar rough warmth of him - he always ran hot - before letting her hand drop to the butt of her gun again. "Wake me if it turns into something." He rumbled against her.

"Of course." She lied, looking back out the window determined not to be fooled again by nerves still strung too tight. Her partner was going straight to the infirmary when they got to the nearest S.H.I.E.L.D. base (well, they all were, but he was going first) and she had no intention of pulling him from his rest again before they got there... Unless the Chitauri returned. _Chitauri..._ The thought suddenly threw her a fresh adrenalin spike and she had to take a deep breath against it. Acrid air poured into her mouth with the inhalation. Not helping. The damn air stank like the aliens, their beasts and their weapons. It set her teeth on edge and spurred her gaze upwards, searching the mat of dirty grey cloud above them for a telltale hole. Nothing. They were gone.

Gone.

She just had to keep reminding herself about that for a while.

The limousine rumbled on, picking its way through the broken street with far more ease and speed, and with far less jostling, than should be expected of it given that it was a limousine and the road was little more than a suggestion. Back when the vehicle had pulled up in front of the Shawarma place she had thought it was another of Tony's extravagant luxuries: ill suited to getting them anywhere but mired in the nearest pothole. There had been something tired and irritable on her tongue about it, but then Stark had said something about a waiting chariot and Clint had stumbled, twisted his bad knee and she had her attention taken up with trying to stop him taking them both to the ground.

Between she, Steve and Thor, they had managed to force her partner away from her shoulder and manoeuvre him onto one of the soft leather bench seats with a minimum of cursing and grimacing. Tony and Bruce followed them into the vehicle until they were all pressed inside together, two benches facing each other, three to a side.

"Max out the suspension buffers." Tony had called to the driver as he eyed them all sitting heavily in the car. "Bunch of heroes here need a smooth ride home."

"Yes sir."

"All right then." He had said, nodding to himself with a tone of 'mission accomplished', and promptly checked out, falling asleep against his window. No one could begrudge him. Not after everything that had happened. And it wasn't a small relief to have silence in the car because of it either.

The driver had been good to his word: they had barely felt a thing. After a time, Clint had managed to relax enough to release the hard grip above his knee, and soon toppled against her shoulder. Thor drifted to sleep shortly afterward; Steve seemed to become lost in his thoughts; Bruce continued sitting quietly, hands shoved under his arms, staring out of the window nearest him; and Natasha was left to watch the silent shattered city, with its silent shattered dead, slide by her window. Until she had been fooled by that crater fire.

Now, beside her Clint twitched in his sleep. HIs hand knocked against her leg and rested there. She slid her eyes from the window to her partner, but he was still and quiet again. In the dim interior lighting his shadowed face, what she could see of it, was haggard, all deep lines and rough pale dirt smudged skin. They all looked the same. Even Rogers. Even Thor. The Shawarma had been an energy boost and they all ate like they were starving, but it wasn't enough. They all needed sleep. She sighed. The sooner they were back on Base the better. Then Clint twitched again with a quiet grunt and murmur this time. The hand on against her leg curled into a fist.

"Hey." Natasha whispered, and jostled her shoulder gently.

"No, I won't." Clint's voice was rough as gravel. The muscles of the arm touching her suddenly tightened. His head jerked against her shoulder and she realised that he was trying to make himself small. The sleep loosened body that had been resting against her was now all hard muscle and bone, all turning, bowing inwards in a slow sleep-clumsy attempt to protect himself from whatever was going on in dreamland. His murmuring choked off with a sharp sudden inhalation that sounded almost like a sob.

"Hey!" She tried again, louder. " Come on Barton. Rise and shine."

"Natasha?" Steve's voice came from the other bench seat. "Is everything ok?"

"Hold on." She replied without looking up. She managed to slip out from her seat and inch back from the sleeping man so that she was directly in front of him. "Shove back Rogers."

"I won't do it!" Clint repeated. The words wrenched from his lips like they were being slowly torn out, like he was fighting with everything he had to prevent their escape. His hands fisted into his jacket.

"What in the Allfather's name is going on?" Thor suddenly boomed behind her, making her jump, and that was it: her partner exploded into waking, into fighting, into fists and fury and something raw and terrible. And somehow he had a knife in his hand.

Well, of course he did.

"I'm up. I'm up... What the hell? Knife! Knife!" Tony called out.

"Whoa, Barton!" Bruce next. "CLINT!"

Natasha lunged forwards and collided with her partner as the car went up in yells and movement. She grabbed at his hand where it held the knife and pushed back. He was still coming out of sleep which gave her the advantage, but only for a second. They slammed together, up against the seat, his wrist up against his own throat and her hands keeping it there.

"Wake up!" She ordered him.

"I won't do it. I won't do it." The words were a desperate snarl, stuck on repeat. As close as they were now, face to face, he was not looking at her. He was still someplace else. Talking to someone else. Crap. "I won't do it."

"Then stop doing it for fucks sake! Barton!" Tony shouted. Then: "Banner! Banner don't you go green! Don't do it. This is a one of a kind military grade luxury vehicle costing -" Whatever Banner said in return was lost in the hubbub as Clint managed to get a hand free and reached around, grabbing the back of her head, yanking her back. Pain like a lightning strike exploded across her scalp. She was jerked away and went with the movement, pulling his knife hand with her, turning, twisting with everything she had. Her partner tried to pull back but she had hold too strongly; she turned so that her back was to him and rammed his wrist forwards, plunging the knife into the plush leather of the seat just to the left of Thor. The knife popped through the hide and slid home to the hilt. Then without warning, Clint suddenly let go of the knife and with an incredibly hard pull, his wrist was finally wrenched from her hands and disappeared behind her. She spun back around, fist raised.

And there was Steve, evidently the reason for Clint's impossibly powerful retreat, with her partner in some sort of wrestling hold that had his arms up over his head. In the enhanced grapple hold Clint had little chance of breaking free, but that wasn't stopping him trying and she heard Rogers curse with the effort of keeping the other man pinned down. Sweat had popped across the super soldier's his face; his arms corded with the strain. Then Clint's good leg suddenly kicked out, missing her by hair to slam with a dull thud against the car door. He pushed. The two men slid backwards across the seat and Tony yelped as he was shoved into his window behind Steve's back.

"Little help!" Steve called out.

"I have him!" Thor rumbled, and grabbed the archers leg, managing to force the knee to bend, letting Steve push them both back. "Calm yourself brother!" Thor ordered. "You are amongst friends!"

"Clint!" Natasha leaped forwards again, coming in close, grabbing her partner's face in both hands. His flushed skin was hot, slick with sweat, between her hands. "Clint!" She repeated when his eyes didn't even begin to track near her face. He tried to twist away again. Steve held on tighter.

"Fuck you! Fuck off. I won't do it. I won't-"

"Look at me!"

"Fuck you!" He tried to twist away. His breathing was coming in pained gasps now. Sweat running in small rivers over his pale skin. Eyes still roving for an escape. Everything priming to pass out or go berserk - again.

"Clint. Its Nat. You're ok. You're ok. Look at me. CLINT!" Nothing. So she hit him. A right hook across the face, with just enough force to make his head snap to the side, but without making him more unfocussed than he already was. When turned back it was with a pained blink, but at least when he opened his eyes there were somewhere where her face was. He blinked again.

"I- Nat? I- There was a - He -" He said. A frown appeared. "I won't-"

"Clint? Clint! It's ok. OK. Stay focussed."

"I- What - ?" He looked right at her this time, frowned again and suddenly flexed his jaw. " Ow! Nat, what the fuck? You hit me? In the face!" She bit back a retort, suddenly exhausted.

"You with me?" She asked. He was still a little confused, but he was there, she could see it. Still, she was glad when he nodded. She nodded too - at Steve. The super solider released his hold with a relieved exhalation, and patted her partner on the shoulder as his arms dropped. Clint, for his part, almost jumped, darting a shocked glance at the big man behind him. His eyebrows climbed his forehead.

"What's going on?" He pushed himself against the seat.

"Ah, you just flipped out! That's what's going on?" Tony barked at him.

"Tony." Bruce put out his hand at the man opposite him. Then he turned to Clint. "Are you all right?"

"Um." Natasha watched her partner's eyes flick from person. He evidently didn't like what he saw. "I - don't know. Uh, yes?"

"It's ok. You will be." Bruce nodded, and his dark eyes focussed on Clint with a solemn, quiet gentleness. "It's ok. Take a minute. Take 10. It's been a rough day."

"It's ok." Steven echoed the scientist, and he patted Clint's shoulder again. "Driver! Take us home." Natasha glanced at the man in front, only realising now that the car had stopped some time during the past few minutes.

"All speed my good man." Tony added. "The hell with the buffers."

Wordlessly, Natasha tugged her partner back into his seat. If he looked terrible before, he looked shattered now. She heard the others sitting back in their seats too, but held her focus on her partner. The limousine rumbled to life around them.

"Did- Did I hurt anyone?"

"No." She told him and watched the relief flood across his face. "Bad dream?" She asked too quietly for the others to hear.

"I don't know." He breathed. "I don't know. What if Loki is still-"

"He's not!"

"But what if he -"

"He's not!" She repeated, not liking where this conversation was going. She knew it had been in both their minds ever since he had woken in the infirmary. There had been no way to know for sure if Loki's hold was truly gone, or if the god had simply been happy to discard her partner for other more pressing matters. The weight of that suspicion suddenly pressed heavily upon her. What the hell were they going to do if the god was still there, his influence still tugging at the corners of her friend's mind? She pulled at his injured leg to secure its position, her agitation making her movements jerky, and felt him wince.

"Nat!" He admonished, his voice strained by more than her being too rough with his knee. "You don't know that. I don't know that. I can't go home to -"

"So you won't go home. Not until S.H.I.E.L.D. clears you." She looked at him directly, suddenly determined. "Which they will." He bit his lip on his protest and they stared at one another. She hoped the resolve she felt was getting through to him. They were partners. It had always been so and always would. When one fell down, the other pulled them up. This was no different. It couldn't be. She wouldn't let it be. "I got your back. Like Moscow."

"Like Moscow?" He blinked. She saw her words register. Saw him slowly catch on, grasp on to her lifeline and hold on. His lips pursed, a small smile trying to gather there.

"Well, mostly like Moscow. Maybe Kenya." She acquiesced.

"Uh, Kenya? I don't fucking think so."

"Spoil sport. Well, if that's no good to you I can always hit you again."

"I think you're enjoying doing that way too much."

"Whatever works..."

The limousine sped them on through the evening gloom, past the quiet dead, and on towards the waiting lights of the rescue vehicles and the medivac waiting to ferry them home.


End file.
